Calendar 2019 closed

I wish you a happy and healthy and creative new year!

A new year means also a new calendar. Did someone remember the calendar/journal I started last January? look here!  

I really pulled it through the hole year. It's not one of the things you start in January and then slowly forget about it until Easter!

I love the whole book. It is me the whole year! Some of the content is my very private thoughts but most of it is only notes about what I did every day.  And scraps and the little memories you forget otherwise.

Sometimes I wrote too much unnecessary stuff. And there had been unmotivated weeks where I filled out the page only on sunday with what I remembered. During vacation I wrote several more pages like a diary.

On the right side is always the calendar part on the left free space for extra thoughts or pictures or notes or sketches or left overs of crafting projects I did that same week.

The new book for 2020 is on my desk now. I hesitated to start it. I feared it might be less nice like the other one. Starting a new book gave me pressure that I had to make something even more special - more perfect. Continuing the old book had been comfortable as I only had to add another page of plenty pages. No pressure that it needs to be gorgeous as there had been already pages I like more and pages I like less.

I finally started and directly messed up the front page :-) I didn't rip it out  jet though. Will see what I can change to make it better. I started a new front page on page number two and the first week on page number 3. But with the failure on the first page the pressure was gone! 

Looking forward now to the new year and what I might put into my album. Maybe I find a more even method to structure the calendar? Maybe I don't. What I like most about this calendar or journal is that I'm thinking a bit more about the days and what happened. Sometimes time passes so quickly you can hardly follow. This book is slowing down.

A bientôt,
Jane 

2019 journal

I will introduce you to my new and (more or less) daily project I started beginning of this year:

In former times ;-) am I old? I used to have a paper appointment calendar in which I also wrote some personal notes to special situations. Normally tiny books. They are very useful to flip through, when you want for example writing a letter to friends or family that you are not talking to frequently and that need an update of several month. Or I used them when making (often years later) photobooks for the kids. 

Then a few years ago I stopped because I had all my appointments in my portable phone that also reminds me of them. But this is not the same. Also much harder to look through later. And personal notes are missing completely. 

Already some years ago, when art-journals started to appear in internet, I admired the idea of a book that contains a bit of your creativity for every day. But I never felt as creative on paper to fill up whole pages with just drawings and paintings. Also if you are following me for a while, you know my drawings are more doodle style.

Anyway I wanted to start a book that contains my appointments (the more important ones, not those like driving kids to sports classes, or other weekly stuff, these are still on my phone) but at the same time leave space for new creative ideas and a little drawing and writing on a regular basis. 

So it's a bit more than a calendar, not really a diary, not completely an art journal and surely no bullet journal!

Want to have a look at the first 5 weeks? I still need to find a balance in what to note and what not. Some pages contains lots of thoughts, in one week there has been nearly nothing happening. But see:

Week 1/2019:

(click to the picture to see it a bit larger)

First week of the year. Still vacation, so no routine appointments. Creative stuff of this week: I tested to make glue-salt-snowflakes and paint them. Also I made a nice "galette des rois" for the 6th January with a great new filling of pears with chocolate and almonds and I noted the recipe.

Week 2/2019:

I didn't liked at all how the page layout turned out (I normally prepare it now every sunday for the following week) I have been thinking about making a new page, but then said that it's kind of normal that you are not always successful with your art and not always really creative and this journal should show the realty, so I kept the page and made the best of it. Also in the end of the week I saw from all the notes that it hasn't been a creative week at all. The most creative thing had been to renew the zipper handles on the old coat of a friend! I also had some origami fails :-(

Week 3/2019:

This week had been all black and white :-) except the sunday. I had been shopping and upcycling an outfit for going into a club friday night (something I didn't do for years and therefor it had been very exciting). On the left page you see a bit of the fabric from my outfit. I bought a dress and had to shorten it.  What I did colorfully on sunday I will show in a previous post.

Week 4/2019:

This weeks page I started only on wednesday after I made tuesday the art with the pulled strings (look here), so you know already what I did in that week.

Week 5/2019:

This week had a real simple layout, as I tested a new stamp set. The business like outfit might be the reason why I didn't feel motivated to note anything except monday where I had a really good session with the crafting kids and friday where a lot of shit happened. Sunday finally I noticed that the page looked really neglected and decided to fill it. I tried out a watercolor brush with water reservoir that my son got from his grandma for birthday but we never tested it. I just tested all colors in different spots and later draw with a black marker over it (I saw ideas like that at pinterest). Crowdy, but so cheering up the hole page. And the watercolors where so much fun! 

On the left side are the penguins I made as examples for the kids crafting class at that monday.

What do you say to my new project? I didn't jet found my style or any routine in it, but its fun. And this book always lying around, reminds me to take a little time to make nice things that are not on the schedule. Filling a page in a week motivates me to try out new techniques, often leading to further projects. Let me know if you want to see more pages in the future ...

A bientôt,
Jane

General calendar 2015

For birthdays and vacation times I have always a calendar in the kitchen, so I am not missing those events (okay, I've never missed vacations even before having a calendar :-). Several years ago I stopped looking for one I like in stores but made one myself and decorated it with little animal icons I found in the web. 

This year I advanced it and I took digitized drawings I made myself to decorate the calendar. 

It's a bit difficult to show here the calendar completely as it should be on size A3. Therefor have a look at those details:

 

The Sundays are highlighted as well as the official vacation days that are also labeled. In my version I highlighted also the school vacation times for our region in an other color.

If you want to have a copy for personal use, feel free to download as pdf-file. It is in A3 format, so probably not everybody is able to print it at home (I let my husband print it at work), but probably every copy-shop can do. 

German version

Version française

J'espére bien que c'est utile pour quelques uns de vous!

A bientôt,

Jane